I watched the movie All Wishes Come True and it made me want to draw yaoi.

Here are the reference photos I used:

Good things in this drawing

• the muscles look less unnaturally plump compared to my last drawing
• elongation of the chest and shoulder muslces is observable
• probably the right decision to go black and white because originally I did it in colour and it looked like a mess
• tried to add some background, not sure how I feel about the quality of the bg but it does look better than before I added the background

Bad things in this drawing

• used a watercolor brush to fill in areas, the shading looks unorganized
• took too long to complete

Rremember for next time

• if the goal is to not take too long with a piece, try neater lines and more simple shanding (three values at most)

The character Calcharo is the reason why I started playing Wuthering Waves at its launch in 2024. They always get me with the long-white-haired beautiful men.

Thoughts on composition

I tried to apply principles I just learned in my lessons on image composition: creating “rhythm” with regions of different values and complexity. This is the main reason why his hair is full white and has no extra rendering.

If we look at this image from the inner region towards the outer region, the values change in this way:

1. grey of the body and face
2. white of the hair
3. black of the background

This “grey-white-black” pattern has the so-called “rhythm” that makes an image look balanced, while something like “white-grey-black” is a gradient and may not offer this type of balance.

This pattern of rhythm can also be seen in the complexity of the regions going from inner to outer:

1. high complexity on the body and face
2. no complexity on the hair
3. medium complexity on the outer background and limbs.

Again, this is in contrast to a pattern of complexities like “high-medium-low” that lacks rhythm.

What was I thinking?

The abs are too plump they look like buns…next time I will give more thought into the shape of the shading.

Process:

Danjin

The character Danjin (with the red eyes) in Wuthering Waves is made for the flashy players, ones who enjoy the thrill of almost dying and the satisfaction of perfectly learning the enemy’s moves.

As Danjin attacks, she sacrifices her health for an increase in attack and critical rate. Essentically, to complete this difficult end-game challenge called “Hologram VI”, you must perfectly dodge or counter every one of the enemy’s attacks for about 5 minutes. The cost of just one mistake, with Danjin’s HP at a low of 1% most of the time, is immediate death.

Denia

The character Denia (with the pink hair) is both a playable character and an enemy boss - one of bosses with the most aggressive attacks and unpredictable timings I think.

If she was friends with Danjin, she would probably begrudingly agree to her sparring requests, and have cake together afterwards.

Drawing thoughts

I knew I wanted to have Danjin’s face in the shadow for this drawing, so that her eyes can glow red in the dark. It was quite a challenge for me deciding the values/saturations of the silhouettes and background, so that when you glance at this picture the first thing you eyes naturally gravitate towards is Danjin, and the second thing is Denia.

This did workout somewhat, as the red of the eyes stand out against everything else under cyan hue. But looking at this retrospectively, it may be more balanced if there were a number of very small areas of red near the perimeter regions of the image, so that a single colour doesn’t appear in only one region.

Composition…still so much to learn…

Some fanart of the interactive film game Road to Empress.

Hiyuki’s first appearnce CG in Wuthering Waves got me hype for her release.

This drawing was a challenge for me in anatomy and perspetive, which I did a mediocore job in. Colour and composition who? not familiar to me…

The 3.1 patch in Wuthering Waves, which tells the story of Aemeath the digital ghost, left me in shambles. Sometimes you just experience something so peak that you’re overflowing with emotions for weeks after, and you have no choice but to release these feelings in the form of something that makes you burn with the brighest fire and bust through your limits, then when it’s done you’re depleted and at peace like white dwarf star.

I went to a Chinese calligraphy workshop for painting orchids. The canvas and painting tools they provided were fancy and comfortable to use, and this planted a seed in me to start learning traditional chinese painting someday.

Instead of orchids somehow I decided that day to paint Qiuyuan, one of my favourite characters to play in Wuthering waves.

The anatomy and proportions were not my best work since I couldn’t really sketch before going in with the ink. But this is also the beauty of ink painting I think, truly the embodiment of “there are no mistakes in art”.

My two favourite villains in Wuthering Waves: Scar and Phrolova, with their boss forms in the ceiling reflection.

Joining the dark side (Fractsidus) if y’all invite me like this, no questions asked.

Glad to see where my Canadian tax dollars went.

AKB48 20th anniversary. Everyone in kami7 came back for the reunion concert except a certain retired idol. I really miss you Mayuyu.

Drawing thoughts

I really went beyond my capabilities in this piece. No references for the pose so I took many photos of my friend’s hand in various strange angles.

Also really happy with the concept of virtual cyborg idol being trapped inside a PC, it worked well with the square shape of the canvas.

The natural colours of the markers I used made this drawing look unintentionally retro, and I like how the colour tones turned out.

It is truly the case that something great can be created from intense emotions, and all technical obstacles will be cleared by the sheer will.

Process